Untouchable
by ze-poodle
Summary: A secret vendetta between two Inquistors threatens to create a new kind of monster from the ashes of a dead world. As the two servants of Mankind continue their decades long duel, the mistakes of their past threaten to return and destroy them both.
1. Chapter 1

* * *

We came to the forge world of Hephaestus IV in orbit around the Helios sub-system during the seventh standard month of 314.M41, as Imperial records will show.

The capital manufactorum, Forge Eight, was in the midst of the busiest section of its eternally-active fabrication cycle. It was at this time of the year that the nine other worlds in the Helios sub-system were supplied with their annual quota of machinery, weapons, tools and engines; after the orders were put in, the five hundred thousand or so servitors of Forge Eight had exactly two months to construct their share of equipment for nearly twenty billion people. As a result, the already polluted and unbreathable atmosphere of Hephaestus IV was flooded with several million metric tons of poisonous chemicals every day. The five centuries of near-constant pollution had resulted in a lingering acid cloud surrounding the higher tiers of the Forge.

The sun was constantly set in a morbid red twilight. I noted the similarity between it and the colour of the robes worn by Mechanicus Adepts

Forge Eight was nestled in a ten-kilometre-wide volcanic chasm on the surface of Hephaestus IV, smokestacks and factory bellows stretching as much as three kilometres into the sky. I had been told that the manufactorum went five times that down, until the environment became unsuitable to sustain life. That deep into the planet's shell, they used servitors and machines exclusively, without hands-on human supervision – and that only if the Technomagi could be called human at all.

Acidic smog lurked around the support pillars of the starport as the _Malleus Maleficent_ lowered itself onto the landing pad, corroding the reinforced metal even as I watched through the rust-red vision of a respirator mask. Everything was red; the sky, the buildings, the ships, the people. As we had entered Sector 314, I had pulled on an internally cooled combat bodyglove and covered that with a sealed and armoured hazardous environment suit, but the smell worked its way through the _Malleus'_ air vents and into my nostrils nevertheless. It was curious; I very rarely visit forge worlds, and the unique smell of burning fossil fuel and plasma exhaust mixed with obscure chemicals whose names contain upwards of eighteen syllables was something of an unpleasant experience.

The landing struts engaged with a groan of machinery and the forward hatch creaked open, letting in a ray of stunted light and foul air. Jack was with me at my side as we set foot on Hephaestus' adamantium surface, his hellgun carefully sheltered from the detrimental environment by a metalweave cloth. I couldn't see his face from behind the visor of his matt-black combat helmet, but I knew he hated the place as much as I did.

Upon our arrival, we were greeted by Fabricator-General Basque, as befitted planetary custom. He had been warned of my approach via astropathic hail, but he was not aware of my importance or my true status. I rarely worked through deception, no matter how mild, but it was necessary that our identity remain an official secret until we had contacted Cerise. Until now, I was merely an investigator from the Arbites on Helios Prime, arriving with a bodyguard.

Ligeia had prepared for me a data-slate containing the required etiquette and decorum to use when addressing a Fabricator-General. I'd left it on the table unread.

Basque was flanked by an eight-man squadron of heavy-set Praetorians, autoguns and flamers surgically fixed to the ends of their limbs and subdermal ceramite plate sewn into the skin of their chest. A lexmechanic hovered on repulsors lifts to his left, its electronic quill poised over a data-slate ready to record the minutes of our meeting for future reference. Basque himself was a six-century old Magos in his prime of technological enhancement; Ligeia had told me offhand that he had forty-eight percent of his flesh and internal organs replaced with bionic prosthetics. I had decided beforehand that I disliked him.

As Basque approached, regarding us with blank, lens-like eyes, I could sense Jack tensing behind me. I hoped he wouldn't try anything stupid. He could be impetuous sometimes.

A hovering cherub-servitor scanned us with an implanted auspex; whatever arbitrary standards Basque set for his visitors, we must have passed, because it beeped positive and flew back to its master's side. If it was looking for my weapons, it wouldn't find any; the outer hazard suit had been constructed specifically to stop sensors detecting any of the weapons I was carrying.

The conversation with the Fabricator-General was brief and rather terse. He bowed in obeisance amidst the hazed daylight. The air steamed with the trace amounts of chemical exhaust that bled from his many implants. I nodded and showed him my authorisation.

Basque had another of his pet cyborgs investigate the pass before waiving us through. He gave his regards and good wishes to our visit. I didn't respond, which must have irked him; not that I could really tell, since he didn't have much of a face to show emotion with.

We left the landing cross, flanked by two Praetorians, ostensibly for our protection.

Cerise Vance awaited us; the Fabricator-General had provided her with a transport, a rust-red anti-grav with the Mechanicus symbol emblazoned on the cabin door. She waved and I nodded in acknowledgement.

As I approached, I could see the worried look on her face. I suspected bad news.

'Weiss is here,' she said, and confirmed my every suspicion.

* * *

'The Magos tell me he arrived a week ago. He was asking for repairs; his ship had been damaged.' I knew that. I was the one who'd damaged it. Jack had fired three Hellfire missiles into his engines; I could recall the white-blue flare as the starboard plasma drives exploded. 

The speeder carried us away from the landing cross and we left the hammer-like shape of the gunship behind in a cloud of chemical smog. We rode with the two Praetorians inside a sealed cabin lit only by the soft amber glow of the control panel. Jack was checking his rifle, wiping the barrel and the battery cartridge to remove any residue from its brief contact with Hephaestus IV's acidic air. Hellguns were notoriously temperamental weapons, and his care was well justified.

One of the Praetorians silently handed Cerise a data- slate. She glanced at it only for a second before handing it to me. I realised I still had my respirator on; I took it off in order to read clearly. Jack didn't look up during the voyage. He still wore his combat armour, having opted to stay covered up. I didn't entirely blame him. The heat inside the speeder cabin was unbearable, so an internally cooled carapace suit would be a blessing.

We banked a hard left, driving far above the recommended speed limit. There were precious few other vehicles travelling in the airways, mostly large-scale transports carrying machinery and replacement servitors from factory to factory. I caught a glimpse of one of the servitors as we passed. I shuddered involuntarily before returning my attention to the data-slate.

'The repairs were done in two days, but he stayed. Never told the Dockmaster why, but his clearance made them forget any questions they might have had. That's why I thought foul play.' The speeder swerved and zipped through the labyrinth of smoke-stacks and pounding generators, only narrowly escaping a collision with a huge construction machine.

'There was no contact from his shuttle during his stay?' I asked her. The slate told me it had left orbit two days beforehand, without Weiss.

'It just left,' she said, shrugging. The speeder nose-dived straight down for several seconds, spearing through several clouds of chemical fog before righting itself and continuing. 'A decoy, most likely. Weiss must have a backup transport off-world.'

I didn't ask any further questions, simply returning my attention to the slate for the remainder of the trip. It was only a handful of minutes later that the speeder ground to a halt outside a squat, square manufactorum. The area was conspicuously absent of servitors, or of any movement at all. I noticed the absence of background noise. The manufactorum's energy generator was inactive.

'MC-three-fourteen, western quadrant,' intoned the Praetorian through one of a series of voxponders. I handed it the slate and stood. The hatch slid open and we disembarked, pulling respirators and visors back on. The smog was causing vision problems, obfuscating anything more than a few metres ahead

MC-three-fourteen was a considerably large construction line in the western side of Forge Eight. It produced, I had been told, servitors – exactly twelve hundred and twenty-two every week. It was a vital manufactorum for the quadrant, replacing destroyed or worn-out servitors with newly-lobotomised criminals and ready-made shell bodies born in the Forge's cloning vats. The fact that its industrial units were silent did not bode well.

We approached the seven-story edifice, the rusted platform creaking beneath our weight.

I halted. 'Where are the building's Adepts?'

'They would be inside, monitoring the assembly line,' replied a Praetorian, the same one who had given me the data-slate. Jack glanced at me and shook his head. Cerise slid a hand into her coat.

'Knowing I approach?' I said suspiciously. 'I was told the Fabricator had ordered them to meet us.'

'I will check,' hummed the second Praetorian, raising a fused autogun and activating a thermal targeting system in its left eye. 'Wait here,' it informed us. It strode into the fog, armoured joints whirring.

We found it several minutes later, surveying the manufactorum's terrace. There were corpses strewn all around; mostly servitors, but I picked out rust-red robes amongst the bodies. The oil and pseudo-blood from their wounds seeped through the iron grille and dripped down to the levels below

I remember, to this very day, the Praetorian's expression as it turned to us. There was none. A human would have expressed horror, fear, or perhaps anger; the Skitarri elite merely turned and said in a voice like lead, 'Who did this?' There was nothing human there, I realised. Just a machine.

'Stay back,' rasped Jack, his first words since landing. He flicked the amber "Ready" rune on his hellgun and the cords connecting the weapon to the power-pack on his waist hummed. Cerise pulled out her laspistol and did likewise.

I drew my sword, igniting it. It sizzled in the polluted air, the mildly combustible vapours surrounding it with a corona of blue-white flame.

The southern entrance was wide open. Amber light flooded from the doorway.

'Jack, take these two to the western exit. Cut him off. Cerise, with me.' Jack saluted, a remnant from his military training, and then wasted no time getting to the exit. The Praetorians followed.

I glanced at Cerise. 'Vance, you can sit this out if you want. We may need someone with the gunship. I have no idea what to expect in there.'

She gave me a long, slow look and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, who cares

'If we go out today, we go in a bang, right?' she said. 'No more playing around. We get him today.

I nodded slowly. We entered, Cerise checking alcoves and corners with her sidearm. The eerie stillness inside made it all the more sinister. A dragon's belly.

The first attack came at us not three steps into the building, from above us. Two construction servitors, their craniums opened and their cogitators clearly tampered with, leapt from a railing ten metres above.

Cerise snapped off a shot with her laspistol, the superheated beam burning into one's shoulder and neatly severing the limb. I whirled, sword in hand; two economical strokes and they lay decapitated on the floor. One staggered for several steps like a senseless drunk before collapsing, its body unwilling to accept the absence of its head.

'Aim for the head. They won't die to anything else,' I warned her. She nodded.

The passageway opened up, led to the main construction line. Servitors lay dead or ignored all along, lying against inactive cogitators and inert plasma engines. A stunted cleaning drone crossed our path. It deftly avoided the corpses, cleaning up the blood and oil. It was the only action it was programmed to do.

We came across the body of a young Adept, only partially augmented. His face, still human, stared in shock. I bent down and examined the wound. Plasma torch.

We reached a crossroads. Without consulting each other – we didn't need to – Cerise slid soundlessly to the left and I went right.

The passageway was small and cramped. Oil and chemicals dripped from the roof and sizzled on the armoured sections of my bodyglove. I mentally recalled the data-slate; there had been a map.

The second of Weiss' drones came at me from the east. I twisted and cut through his neck before he got close.

The next one came from the west. Then another. And another, from the north.

My blade entered through one's ribcage. A sideways heave made it exit violently, cleaving open the drone's torso like a gutted fish. I used the momentum to decapitate a second. The crackling disruption field made short work of what protection their near-total mechanical implants gave them.

I whirled and blurred, and they died.

Their bodies clashed to the ground, writhing in simulated agony. The steel pins holding one's jaw shut snapped apart and it opened its mouth to let out a strangled, wordless scream; it had no tongue.

With a burst of noise and a clash of pistons, the engines around me came alive. I was momentarily disorientated by the sudden overload of sound. A plasma drive to my left whined into life and began pulsing methodically, like a heartbeat. Cogitators whirred and machinery began to grind, sending sparks spitting across the metal walkway. Too fast!

A lance of fear shot through me. I was not experienced with the inside workings of a forge, but the data-slate had told me enough about this factory's workings. The Hephaestus IV manufactorums each had individual, self-sufficient and internally housed power reactors. That allowed each construction line to continue functioning regardless of a city-wide blanket power loss. The reactors were designed to run for months at a time. They weren't constructed to stop and start at will.

I suspected that Weiss had just activated the forge's primary and secondary reactors. The dangerously temperamental machinery was being reactivated after an unscheduled slumber, and it was doing so hastily, without the maintenance servitors to oversee the process.

Engines containing enough volatile plasma and chemicals to wipe out a decent-sized habitation block were being activated in haste, and without safety measures. The whole factory was rapidly becoming a giant explosive.

That is another reason why I do not like forge worlds.

A set of doors to either side of me opened and servitors poured through, shrieking without tongues or voices. I blurred and cut into their ranks. A spinning chain-blade missed my face by an inch. In two swings I severed its owner's hand, and then its head.

The vox-bead in my ear crackled with static. 'Holtz!'

I heard a flurry of shots down a corridor to my left. Cerise was in trouble. A servitor tried to impale me on the end of an industrial drill. I slid to one side to evade it. Then I cut the drill in two and elbowed the drone in its slackened face hard enough to dent its skull.

'Holtz! _Holtz!_' More shots. She only had a laspistol with her. Foolish, foolish man; should never have let her go on her own.

I wheeled and cut. The servitors were numb to pain, mindless and without fear; their limbs were strong, but I was stronger. The power sword was a masterpiece, gifted to me by my mentor on my initiation to the rank of Inquisitor, along with a pair of antique bolt pistols. The blade was shorter and thicker than most, the handle lengthened to allow it be used two-handed; it was a forceful, impolite weapon. I appreciated those qualities.

Five more servitors hobbled out of the left entrance. I made three brutal swings and made corpses out of them. The air stank of blood and oil.

_'Holtz!'_ Cerise's voice was weak. That was what I would remember most; how weak her voice sounded. Like she was far, far away.

I turned and ran. I splashed heavily through a corridor slick with oil and chemicals. Two las-shots; a strangled cry echoed from further down, mirrored by its twin over the vox-bead.

I found Cerise face down near a cogitator engine, blood spreading outwards in a dark, oily pool beneath her. Her attackers were dead or gone. Her weapon lay on the grilled floor, the firing rune beeping red to indicate an empty battery. Her eyes were staring at nothing; blank, like the eyes of the dead Magos. Empty.

There is one quality which defines an Inquisitor; detachment. It is a saddening thing to realise, but it must be so. A person in my line of work must treat death as if it was waiting in the wings, patiently attending its cue. I had initially brought Cerise on as a bodyguard. A sobering fact about bodyguards is that they usually die before you do. If they don't, they aren't doing their job very well.

We are taught that it is important not to see your companions as friends. The moment you do, you begin to fear their loss, and fear has no place in an Inquisitor's heart. You are an Inquisitor; lesser men are nothing but tools to you. So we are taught.

Six years ago, on the distant penal colony of Van Teichmann's World, I met a woman named Cerise Vance. She saved my life, and in return I gave hers another chance, serving Mankind in the greatest way possible. I keep only a handful of followers. Her addition was worthwhile, influential, but we had never truly connected. Empathy is not something that comes naturally to me. But once, two years beforehand, she was captured whilst infiltrating a Chaos cult. I still remember the expression of relief on her face after Jack's demolition charges blew the door to her cell. It is one of my happier memories.

She had become less than that now. Now, she was a lesson in detachment. I must do with her what I did with Gregor, with Elienne, with Thulmann, with my decades-dead family. I must forget her.

I stared at her body for a long moment.

What was she? A friend?

I do not have friends.

* * *

I keyed in the transmission codes to open a vox channel with Jack. As I waited for the static to produce a response, I deactivated and sheathed my power sword, then looked at the room. It was dominated by a large, complicated logic-engine, humming away without interference. Red warning lights glared in several places, complicated machine-script spreading over the screens. 

Cerise had found the central control room. This must have been where Weiss had activated the engines. I had no way to shut it off – the complexities of the logic engine were beyond me. It was clear that as long as this cogitator was active, the reactor was active. And as long as the reactor was active -

My thoughts were interrupted by a scream of tortured metal, and it seemed that the entire building shook and swayed. The background pulse was speeding up; as I'd feared, the plasma reactor was rapidly reaching an unstable state.

Then it occurred to me that there is always a way to shut things off. I recalled that Cerise had a pair of tube charges amongst her equipment.

I took one and left the other on her lap, keying the activation code and pressing the timer. Then I left the room and made sure the door was shut behind me.

There was a hiss of static and the affirmative beep that indicated the channel was open and Jack was waiting. Weiss would be monitoring our communication – the man could do it without any equipment, just via the machinery in his head.

'Black Soldier, come in. Black Soldier, come in. Hammer summons.' I stepped into a shadowed alcove and began counting the seconds.

_'Black Soldier reporting. Status?'_ Was that gunfire behind his voice? I could hear the systematic pumping of an auto weapon of some kind. Jack had run into trouble, it seemed.

'Immediate withdrawal. Iron Man has rigged the generators. They're going to detonate. Situation is critical, and we have to act fast. Confirm status.

_'Pinned down in the lower corridor. Iron Man is swamping us. The Praetorians are taking a beating. Is Firelight with you?' _

'Firelight is deceased.

A pause. _'Hammer, we have slight static interference. Confirm fatality.'_

'Confirmed.'

_'Recommend point assault! Pattern arrowhead!' _

'Denied. Execute pattern hexenhammer. Westward hook. Confirm.

_'Pattern hexenhammer confirmed, sir. Black Soldier out. The Emperor protects.' _

'Hammer out. The Emperor protects.

Jack had his orders. He'd taken Vance's death as badly as I'd expected. I hoped it wouldn't influence his performance. Vengeance is an admirable thing, but not when uncontrolled.

I'd do the rest myself. I drew my bolt pistols from their oiled holsters at my waist. I had trained and trained for hours in the cargo hold of the _Malleus Maleficent,_ firing until my wrist was sore from the recoil. I could now draw and kill a man in less than a second. It was a talent I sometimes wish I did not have.

The boltguns were themselves antiques, having been used and maintained by my Lord Inquisitor Rhinehart for two centuries beforehand. The construction was, I'm told, not standard; it packed a ten-round slide clip that slid into the grip of the weapon, rather than a thirty-round sickle magazine. I had eight more clips behind my belt. More than enough.

I pressed my back against the wall and braced myself.

'Fifty-seven…fifty-eight…fifty-nine…sixty.'

There was a ripping, tearing explosion as the tube charge in the control room detonated, destroying the central logic engine, the generator controls, most of the hallway, and all that remained of Cerise Vance. The steady thrum-thrum of the reactor slowed to a trickle, and then stopped entirely. All was quiet. For now.

She always told me she wanted to go out with a bang.

* * *

Everything you will read here is true. 

Death is one of the things one must become accustomed to in service to the Imperium. Treachery is another. Hard decisions that most men have to make once a lifetime have to be made every day. Things must be given up, sacrifices must be made. A million men must die every day for that glorious ideal that is the Imperium.

But you've heard all this before.

Let me tell you a truth. My name is Samuel Christian Holtz. I am an Inquisitor; I have been for seventeen of my thirty-nine years. I have no living relatives. I have no bionic implants, have never lost a limb and possess no physical mutations. You may have noticed that I prefer the honesty of the sword over technomancy and psyker tricks. Indeed, the last of those is eternally beyond me. I am what you would call a Monodominant. I have been called uncompromising, ruthless, and occasionally cruel. This opinion does not disturb me. I was raised to be like this. It disturbs others instead.

A few are not repulsed. Vance, for one, had an unnatural fascination with my work and my manner. Jack has, I believe, never truly cared what others think of my methods. My savant does not pay enough attention to the physical world and rarely sees me in the field.

I have no friends and few companions. You will have noted that I prefer to remain detached. I have always found it difficult to connect to other people, although I never had trouble understanding them. People find me unsettling. There is a story to that.

I distrust machinery. I distrust psykers. I distrust the motives of other Inquisitors, the servants of other Inquisitors, the methods of other Inquisitors, and other Inquisitors in general. I don't even trust myself sometimes.

I am of slightly below-average height, stocky and sturdily built. My eyes are dark, my hair is darker and cut short. This means nothing. My parents died when I was five. This too means nothing.

I am determined, resolute, and untouchable in more ways than one. This is what matters. That and the fact that I have a weapon in my hand and a murderer to kill.

I have a truth to tell you. Would you like to hear it?

* * *

**A/N:** M'okay. First try at a realistic Inquisitor story. First-person, which seems to have worked well enough in the past. I've only ever tried a multi-chapter story in third-person; doing an entire epic from a single point of view should be challenging.

More than partially inspired by Dan Abnett's _Eisenhorn_ trilogy, the reading of which is akin to an enema of liquid joy and should be canonised as religious literature. Go read it now. Now. Now, I tell you, or I shall come to your house and remove your spleen.

There's going to be some soliloquys, a lot of internal wrangling, and a fair amount of action. And some romance down the track, just because that's something you should always have. Reviews will be most wonderfully appreciated. Criticism will be accepted with open arms and a joyously masochistic grin. Feel free to point out silly spelling and grammatical errors, I'll only feel mildly stupid and embarrassed. And please, please give me some feedback because I don't get enough of it.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

I kept to the shadows, moving through the dragon's belly as quietly as I knew how. Stealth was not my first choice, but my training proved useful and I was not noticed by the servitors patrolling the manufactorum's innards. I noticed that these ones carried heavier multi-barrelled autoguns and melta weapons and had carapace plating. Combat models. 

As I progressed through the bowels of the manufactorum, a terrible sound rose from the bowels of the facility; a deep, unstable roar like an earthquake's early trembling. Beneath it like an undercurrent there were screams. Horrible, terrified wails. Panicked cries. Men dying.

Technicians, supervisors, Adeptus…whatever men still living inside this hellish place that could be called men were dying. Their own machinery was falling apart around them.

I could possibly find the security cogitator and activate the safeguards that Weiss had disengaged, to further slow the factory's inevitable disintegration. But to what purpose? The dragon was dying. Weiss was infinitely more experienced than I in the ways of techno-arcana; if he wished this facility to destroy itself, there was little I could do to truly prevent it.

And if I spent time hunting down the control room, Weiss would have time to escape.

I conveyed this news to Jack, and told him to alert the Skitarri. He informed me a moment later that a strike team and a disaster crew were on their way. I had no less than twenty minutes. It would be enough.

The Adeptus Mechanicus were inhuman. But they were not evil inherent; they should not have to die like this, trapped under suffocating tonnes of machinery and metal. No man should die like that.

Another crime to add to Weiss' list. Fifteen years had made it a long list.

I would find him, and I would stop whatever radical work that Emperor-cursed cyborg was attempting here. And if that failed…I had the second tube charge on my belt. Just in case.

I passed through into the enginarium, where the manufactorum's plasma reactors were housed. They lay in the centre of the chamber, secure behind four-inch-thick transparent plasteel and numerous radiation shields. Eight thick swathes of power cords and transfer channels snaked across the floor and to sockets in the wall like the spindly legs of a huge, malevolent arachnid. It pulsed softly in the shadows. Like a dragon's guts.

The air was oppressive and stifling, thick with lubricant and the sharp, charred smell of plasma. Heat fell off the reactors in tangible, shimmering waves, washing over the bare skin of my face. The chamber was lit by a soft blue afterglow that, I realised, emanated from the inert reactors themselves. As I approached the radiation shields, I felt the faint background humming, rattling my bones and setting my teeth on edge. Even with their power forcibly shut off, they still growled. Like dormant volcanoes.

A quick inspection showed me where several maintenance hatches had been abruptly torn away. The red paint was scored and chipped along each frame where crowbars had been forced in and centuries of sacred salves and lexmechanical seals had been broken.

I peered into one of the open covers and saw rows of copper-bound power cells wet with black lubricant, insulated electrical routing and lagged iron pipes. Transfer clips had been attached to some of these cells, and wires attached to them ran back to an evidently new module box bolted to the reactor casing. A digital rune on the displayed flashed crimson on and off.

This was where Weiss had triggered the machine spirit's activation process. I was not surprised that he was able to do it. I had seen him do worse with wires and batteries.

Footsteps sounded from across the room. I slid away from the hatch and into the darkness, gripping both pistols tightly.

A man in salvaged Imperial Guard-issue flak armour, complete with helmet and a largely modified heavy stubber. I recognised him. One of Weiss' retinue. I'd severed his left hand a year ago on 23-Tarnis, near the galactic fringe. The reactor's sapphire half-light gleamed off the bionic prosthetic. He walked up to where I had stood and examined the core. Then he put the metal hand to the vox-communicator on his ear.

'My lord, this is Lazarus. The reactor is inactive. Where are you?' There was an inaudible reply. Then the ex-soldier drawled out, 'Yes, lord. The control room had been blown out. Tube charge, from the looks of it.'

A long pause as he listened to the speaker on the other end. 'Are you sure?' he said, and I could hear the sudden anxiety in his voice.

'Holtz is _here?_' he hissed. I smiled. It's pleasant to be reminded of the effect my name can have on people. I began to leave the shadowed cover of the power coils, carefully slipping one pistol back into its holster. The other was a reassuring weight in my hand.

'No, my lord. Yes. I'll return right away. Lazarus out. The Emperor protects.'

I nearly snarled when I heard that last statement. The nerve.

Lazarus switched off the vox and looked down to check the stubber. I didn't let him finish; I slammed the reinforced grip of the bolt pistol into the back of his head. The helmet absorbed much of the force – without it, the blow would have cracked his skull – but he swooned, giving me time to rip the stubber out of his hands and throw it into the shadows.

I slid my left arm around his neck and pressed the wide muzzle of the boltgun against his sweaty cheek.

'Morning. How's the hand?' I growled.

Lazarus whimpered.

* * *

I didn't learn much from Lazarus. Weiss kept devoted servants. Initially, he refused to say anything at all, but he became much more talkative after I shot off his remaining hand. 

People would call me cruel for that. That wasn't cruel. Cruelty would be leaving him tied to a reinforced pipe in the enginarium to bleed to death, without his prosthetic or his vox.

I did that as well.

Lazarus had held his tongue well – loyalty was an admirable trait, and it was sickening to find it in one such as him – but from him I learnt that Weiss was retreating to the primary assembly line near the top floors of the manufactorum, that he and his retinue were hastily evacuating the planet via orbital shuttle, and that I was a bastard. Of two of these I was already aware.

But this begged the question; why? Why would Weiss attempt something so blatant as an act of mass terrorism against the Adeptus? What could he hope to gain from attacking a servitor assembly line?

I banished the questions from my mind and left Lazarus bleeding behind me. Questions signify doubt, and blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

I pondered the meaning of that mantra as I moved towards the stock elevator at the other end of the enginarium, amidst the distant, echoing wails of the dying, and Lazarus' increasingly weak pleas for mercy.

The handless man's vox-communicator began to spew static just as I entered the elevator. I bent to pick it up. The white noise cleared and a familiar voice came from the other end. Harsh, intangible, muddled by vox interference, but I knew it well.

'_Lazarus, come in. Lazarus, come in.'_ I'd recognise that thinly accented voice anywhere.

I looked at it for a second, momentarily speechless. An idea presented itself. I pressed the receiver rune and held the vox to my mouth.

'Weiss, is that you?'

No response.

'I know it's you.'

There was a long pause. Then, _'Lazarus?'_

'Dead. Or soon to be, although if you can get here quickly enough you could probably stop the bleeding.'

'_You won't win.'_

'We're the Inquisition, Victor. We always win.'

There was a moment of dead silence before the vox was cut off from the other end. I let the machine fall to the floor and crushed it. Then I checked the ammunition in my pistols and made sure the sword was within swift reach.

The elevator hummed softly as I ascended to the highest floors. When I reached them, this would end. Fifteen years, and it was all coming to an end.

* * *

The lift ground to a trembling halt some three floors from the top. I exited via the emergency hatch and, after a brief climb up the walls of the shaft, forced the doors open. 

A shot rang out. A las-shot. It hissed past my head as I left the shaft, sizzling in the chemical air and missing my face by a hand's breadth to shatter against the elevator controls. There was a warning siren.

I leapt out from between the two iron doors, tumbled and landed just as the stock elevator's emergency protocol cut in, its doors slamming shut vigorously. I would have been inadvertently bisected.

I fired twice down the passage, alarmed at the noise the Lucius made.

Two more las-shots flickered down back at me.

Sheltering behind an iron bulkhead, I switched to auto and emptied a full clip down the length of the hallway. It was like holding a thunderstorm in one hand. The las-shots ceased.

I swung back into cover, exchanging clips. A few more spits of laser drizzled past me and into the floor, leaving ashen grooves in the metal. Then a voice. Harsh, metallic.

'Holtz? Samuel, is that you?'

_Weiss._ There was barely ten metres between us. Fifteen years and ten metres.

'Samuel, you must listen to reason. This vendetta you pursue is nothing but madness – '

I answered by sending a hail of bolts from the second pistol in the direction of his voice. There was a saddened pause before I was answered in turn by a stream of bullets and las-beams. The heavily concentrated fire tore fat chunks out of my cover.

I grabbed one still-hot lump of metal and hurled it overarm across the hall. It clanked into a patch of shadow and Weiss' two combat servitors, trained to fire based on sensory input and not common sense, concentrated their fire on an empty space.

I stepped out, sighted through the targeter and fired. His servitors were good shots; quick to draw a bead and quicker to fire. But I was faster, and I could _think_.

I caught the first standing in the open in the middle of the shadowed hallway, its shoulder-implanted stubber chattering away at the wall. It turned to face me as I stood. The bolt made a hole in the midst of its forehead. In a vivid fraction of a second, I caught its expression – it may have been smiling – just before the deuterium round exploded and the servitor's head disappeared.

The second whirred around at its companion's death, realised its mistake and began firing.

One of the laser shots scorched the sleeve of my bodyglove. The Lucius kicked and roared. The shot slammed into its teeth and blew out the sides of its skull. It fell slack-jawed to the ground.

I heard heavy, uneven footsteps amidst the clamour of collapsing machinery and crumbling walls. Weiss was running.

I ran too, across the vaults and through the hallway. The foundations of the building screamed. The walls quivered with its death throes. The noise was apocalyptic. I pray that I never hear its like again; it was like being in the epicentre of the end of the world.

The grille roof above me turned the dusty red light into a series of rapidly flickering lines. Sweat poured off me as I ran. Air burned in my lungs.

As we crossed into a third corridor, I sighted Weiss running parallel to me. We were separated by a ten-metre gap inhabited by some fifty-metre long spinning work of the Adeptus. He saw me and stopped and twisted on his bionic leg to raise the spitting plasma torch in his left hand.

I ducked backwards as the blue-white flare ripped across the gap between us and drilled deep into the far wall.

A glimpse was all I had of him; tall, wiry, every inch of skin other than his head wrapped tightly in black leather, the grimy light gleaming from his single augmetic eye and the iron sections of his torso. He ran with a heavy limp, but was fast and untiring. Every hasty step ejected superheated steam from his left kneecap.

I fired back, but he was running again, his black stormcoat flying out behind him.

I ran on, glimpsed him in the next hollow and fired again. At the next, nothing. I paused and reloaded before pulling off the outer sections of my suit. It was becoming hellishly hot inside the stomach of MC-three-fourteen.

Cerise had frequently used combat stimms in situations such as this. I shunned them, knowing too much about their after-effects, but it was at times like this that I wished I'd taken up on the ex-convict's offer. A single 'Slaught injection would have allowed me to catch up to Weiss, tackle him to the ground and beat him to death with his own metal leg. But I did not, and here we are.

Well, Cerise wasn't, but that was life. I comforted myself by focussing on my hatred.

I reached and climbed a set of staircases, covering each turn with the pistol as Cerise had once taught me. I heard a machine noise, heavy and industrial. Flickering chemical globes set in wall-brackets illuminated the way. Through another forced service door, I exited into what a stencilled brass plaque identified as the assembly area. Smoke coughed and noise rolled from behind the hatch.

The assembly chamber was vast, three stories, with vaulted roofs and layer upon layer of iron railing supporting countless machines and monitoring cogitators. The rumbling equipment it contained was ancient and immense. The chamber was dominated both by a colossal assembly line – a single unbroken tread upon which the dismembered parts of servitor bodies lay in disarray – and also by a huge, broad glass skylight that spanned the length of the west wall and rose two levels high.

The entire factory floor was illuminated almost solely by the light from this enormous window, casting the chamber into a dusty ruby half-light that birthed myriad shadows and murky crevices. The dragon's heart. The heat was abominable.

This assembly was sixty metres long and constructed from cast-iron and copper painted in matt-red lead paint. All along its length, it birthed dozens of veins in the form of waist-thick conduits and heat-exchangers that intertwined with the other machinery, creating a labyrinth of snake-like cords wreathed in smoke and steam. Unfinished servitors hung limply from a production chain like hunks of meat hanging from abattoir hooks. They swayed gently in the wind, like hanged men.

I moved on cautiously and clambered up a ladder frame onto a raised platform of metal grille. The vox-bead chimed in my ear. It was Jack. I could barely hear him over the noise.

'_Black Soldier, reporting. Praetorian reinforcements in eight. Hexenhammer engaged. Circling facility on western side. Enemy shuttle located. Pattern?'_

I considered. I was in no mood to take chances. 'Initiate pattern thunderbolt.'

'_Pattern thunderbolt confirmed,'_ said Jack happily. _'Firelight's retribution comes.'_

There was a distant, shuddering roar from outside. A monumental shadow passed over the room's great window, and for an instant it blacked out the sun.

'_Black Soldier out. The Emperor pro–'_With a sudden hash of static, Jack's vox line was brutally cut off. I recognised that as a sign of a communications breach.

A familiar voice sounded in my ears.

'_Hello, Samuel.'_

I paused. He had made upgrades since we last met.

'Morning, Victor.'

'_I thought you may wish an opportunity for us to speak privately. There are matters we must discuss.'_

'We have nothing to discuss.' I could not stay the bitterness from entering my voice.

'_On the contrary,'_ he rasped through the vox._ 'I must at least try and reach a diplomatic solution with you, Samuel. You, with what you have seen, should realise why my work is so vital – '_

'Your _work_ is suicidal,' I spat. 'It is sown in death and death is all you will reap.'

'_What I will reap is life, Samuel. Life in its purest form, in its deadliest form. I will create life.'_

'You will create a heresy.'

'_Your rhetoric is, as always, narrow-minded. Too narrow for your own good. You are an intelligent man, but your stubborn ignorance cripples you.'_

'Ignorance is bliss.'

'_Has your life been blissful lately?'_ he said plainly.

I said nothing. I was beginning to suspect he was merely delaying me. It was succeeding. This was the longest conversation we'd had for ten years.

'_I present you with a choice. Walk away. Place your guns on the ground and leave the manufactorum before its destruction. Forget about me, and you can live to fight the Emperor's enemies another day. But stay here, struggle, and you will die. I will not let you interfere with my work a second time.'_

'Weiss, I don't care about your work. I don't care about your science or your plans. I want you _dead._ What you did was… inexcusable. And I can never forgive you. I will hunt you until one of us lies dead before the other.'

Silence. White noise. Then, slowly, carefully, Weiss answered

'_I am truly sorry. Once, years ago, I had hopes that we might be friends. A pity.'_

'An Inquisitor does not know pity.'

'_Truly. Please, Samuel. You have resisted my every attempted at reconciliation, but you are a worthy and cunning opponent, and for that I will give you a moment. Then I will kill you.'_

The vox snapped off.

* * *

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye a half-second after Jack cut the vox. A las-shot rang out and snapped the railing of the platform I stood on. The second and third flew past my head as I dropped to a crouch and returned fire. Both pistols shuddered. The bolts left trails of smoke as they sliced the thick air. 

I saw, high up amidst the second tier of the assembler's myriad levels of machinery, a bulky shape waver and fall. More materialised behind it, distant, but within range. A trap. I'd walked straight into it.

The smoke was lit by a half-dozen flares as they found their target and let loose.

Gunfire of various types hailed down towards where I stood. I wasted no time. I leapt up and over the railing and landed on top of the assembler itself. An inaccurate volley of bolt fire sent me seeking cover behind an iron partition. Beneath me, the great machine lay dormant.

Over the surge of noise, I heard an enthusiastically vox-amplified voice shouting. I strained to hear.

'_He cowers there. Pin him down!'_

I risked a glimpse at my attacker's position. Four or five servitors standing in formation on the rail, weapons blazing, and behind them a tall figure in thick maroon robes directing their fire. I saw the four sinuous, snake-like limbs protruding from its back. They told me all I needed to know. It was Lambert, Weiss' pet Magos.

And behind Lambert and his machines, I saw a limping man limp shamble through the smoke and clamber up a ladder on the western end.

A concentrated salvo forced my head back down. I tried to vox Jack for help. The bead was silent. Weiss had jammed the channels.

'_Strike him! Firing pattern 46-B-delta!'_

Gunfire thudded into the partition. I felt the metal behind my back heat up from the las-blasts.

It was a stark choice. If I stayed, Weiss escaped and everything, Cerise's death, would be for nothing. If I left cover, I would be torn to shreds.

The building trembled.

I could not let Weiss escape. There was another path. I touched the silver tube hanging from my belt.

I rose from my crouch and broke into a low, fast dash across the assembler. Bless the Throne, but it took a heartbeat for the servitor's sluggish targeting systems to track my mad sprint. Instead of tearing into my flesh as I had expected, their bullets undershot me and echoed off bare metal. The air filled with the seething smell of cordite and laser discharge. Two more shots sliced into the edge of the platform deck before me and gouged through the grille.

I took a leap from the top of the assembly machine, and fell ten feet back to the bottom floor. I struck the concrete surface with bone-crunching force. Gunfire slashed past me, bullets grazing my torso. It was thankfully inaccurate.

I crawled a few feet and fell prone behind a thick cable. The barrage stopped. I began to edge across the factory floor.

'_Activate heat senses. Find him. Find him now!'_

The Imperial-standard tube charge is a Guard issue demolition weapon intended primarily to unlock blast doors and flatten certain mission objectives. Stormtroopers and assault units make common use of it, and it was through Jack that I found a steady supply. I believe he builds them from spare parts found during our campaigns. Cerise had always liked using them. She liked explosions.

In terms of sheer destructive power, a tube charge was outclassed by the melta bomb. But a tube charge has a single, surprisingly useful advantage; it can be thrown.

I could see Lambert, standing twenty feet above me; a tall, gaunt figure swathed in a rust-red robe. His mechadendrites swayed and danced snakelike above his head, sharp talons snapping open and shut. The voxponder in his chest was blaring out mathematical orders to the watching servitors in his thick, artificial drone. It was beginning to grate on my nerves. The heat and the constant tremors and Lambert's vexing tones was making my blood boil.

Shut up, Lambert, I thought. Just please, please, shut up.

I keyed in the timer on the tube charge and put it to ten seconds. Then I hurled it overarm from behind a console, and then I ran.

I heard what I hoped was the tube charge landing on Lambert's platform. The Magos abruptly fell silent, which was pleasant, really. I could picture him noticing the tube charge in my mind's eye.

There was a sound of heavy feet dashing across the platform above me. I put my fingers in my ears, ducked inside an alcove and counted.

Then there was a very loud explosion. The manufactorum's tremors swelled somewhat.

Smoke and fire billowed from the eastern side of the factory. Lighted chemicals flickered and danced across the floor. Severed electrical conduits sparked and spat scattered tongues of lightning. I stood, my ears ringing from the force, and surveyed my handiwork. I waved my hand in front of my face to dispel the smouldering fumes.

There was a jagged hole in the far wall that stretched ten feet across. The entire second tier had…well, it had disappeared. Much of the assembler was a gaping wreck, spewing its charred electromechanical intestines out onto the flooring. Weiss had gone, Lambert was no-where to be seen, and his servitors were ashes.

The chamber's single great skylight cracked, and then fell outwards with a deafening shatter. Chemicals and mist flowed in from the jagged breach.

The charred head of a servitor lay next to my right foot. I kicked it into the shadows.

Then I pressed on.

* * *

Weiss had ascended through the roof of the assembly chamber with what remained of his retinue and out to a broad landing platform set into the slanting crown of MC-314. We were at the highest point of the forge's reach and the furnace winds were violent and hot. 

An orbital shuttle was parked near the far edge of the platform. I saw Weiss and several dark shapes hurrying towards it, some wounded and limping, being supported by the others. Servitors followed them. One noticed me exiting from a service vent and chattered a waring in nonsensical machine-code.

Weiss turned to face me and I could feel his stare. The air shimmered as waves of heat crashed onto the landing pad. He said something to his followers, who hurried onto the shuttle. He stayed.

I approached him, pistols held in both hands. Five combat servitors trained their heavy weapons on me, but Weiss raised a hand and they did not fire. They merely observed us silently, dead eyes seeing and remembering nothing.

'I see you retain your passion for meaningless destruction,' he called out to me over the sound of the wind. 'A shame.'

The vox beeped in my ear and the link was revived. Jack hissed a message.

'_Black Soldier, ascending furnace tower. Pattern thunderbolt in progress. Shuttle and Iron Man sighted. Location confirmed.'_

I didn't respond. I couldn't yet afford to let Weiss know that his jamming had failed.

Instead, I shouted back out to the renegade.

'The Adeptus Mechanicus are sending reinforcements. You will not escape this forge alive.'

'The Mechanicus will not aid a technophobic Monodominant,' he called back, his voice calm and steady. Yet his adamantium prosthetic hand was clenching and unclenching, a sign of anxiety. I worried him. This was good.

'Then I shall kill you myself,' I replied, raising one bolt pistol. 'You will not escape me, Weiss. You will never escape me.'

'I try and try to reach peace with you, Samuel, but it is futile. You are like a pit hound trained only to bite and never to let go. You would rather that your jaw broke than to let your prey escape. Is this not true?'

'I will take that as a compliment.'

Weiss laughed at my response; a deep, hollow chuckle, almost derisive. He was mere feet away, the closest we had been in years. My right pistol was trained on his skull.

Weiss grinned. Most of his face, like the rest of his body, had been rebuilt from scratch over the years. His was an iron smile, robotic and mechanical. But it still conveyed perfectly the intellectual egotism I had known and hated for a decade and a half.

'Samuel, I have a ship, and you do not. Shall we debate who possesses the better hand?'

I pressed a finger to the bead in my ear. No time to be subtle. I whispered a vox message to Jack.

Then I shouted out to Weiss, 'But I have a trump, old friend.'

What rose then from below the landing platform amidst the infernal twilight, suspension thrusters wailing mournfully, was the _Malleus Maleficarum._ Five hundred tonnes and forty metres of thrice-layered adamantium and unbreakable armoured hull, twin plasma turbines glowering malevolently and landing struts extended like the limbs of some ancient, elephantine behemoth. The mere force of its presence was enough to make the unstable platform shudder.

It had once been a Thunderhawk gunship in service to the blessed Adeptus Astartes, but time and circumstance had pushed it into my hands, and over the decades it had changed as I had changed. The burgundy daylight gleamed from the barrels of autocannon and hellfire missiles. Spotlights mounted below its blunted nose bathed Weiss and his servitors in stark white light.

I saw Weiss' jaw fall open momentarily at the sight, before he turned and took a step towards the shuttle. That brief movement was enough for Jack. His temper was fuelled, his mind empty but for the thought of Cerise, dead and gone forever. He let loose.

I didn't quite see what happened after that, because I was preoccupied with finding some sort of cover with all haste. It's thankful that Jack did not use the _Malleus'_ missiles or the monstrous dorsal battle lance; that would have obliterated me, Weiss, the servitors, the orbital shuttle and virtually the entire landing pad.

But even without the major weapons, its rage was a terror to behold.

Heavy bolters and autocannon mounted on the ends of the short wings opened fire and showered the platform with a storm of tracer fire. Concrete cracked and cratered. I glimpsed a servitor being methodically shredded into a liquid soup of bone and flesh before an autocannon round obliterated the spongy remnants of its torso. A stray autocannon shell splintered the casing of a fuel reservoir and fire fountained aloft in a radiant inferno, settling down across the deck in a gentle rain.

Weiss, more intelligent than his drones, had limped towards the shuttle before the _Malleus_ fired. I shouted after him wordlessly and leapt out of cover. Jack saw this and quickly silenced the cannons. I gave chase, stumbling over debris and corpses. My pistols flared and shuddered, but the distance was too great and all I did was chip the shuttle's paintwork.

Weiss disappeared into the entry hatch. I saw the struts rise and the lift thrusters engage as Jack's second solid-shot barrage detonated ineffectually against the shuttle's hull. He could not use the missiles for fear of killing me in the blast, and without the missiles the shuttle was impenetrable.

He chose to let Weiss escape to save me. I cannot say I appreciated his choice.

The shuttle ascended into the smog-deepened atmosphere. I fired pointlessly at its departing shadow and felt crippled, impotent, as the burning fuel seared my skin and the _Malleus Maleficarum_ bellowed its wrath to an empty red sky.

* * *

**A/N:** Second chapter. Read and review. Complain. Criticise. Mock. Etc. Blagh. Tired.

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